But when the Iranian regime failed to collapse or capitulate, when Netanyahu\u2019s prediction of a national uprising failed to materialize, Trump turned to threats of war crimes and genocide against the very people he claimed to be helping liberate:<\/p>\n
A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don\u2019t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS?<\/p>\n
These were not the words of a strategist. They were the words of a maniac. And they had a galvanizing effect, though hardly in the way Trump might have intended. Some of his erstwhile acolytes\u2014Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones\u2014seem to have woken up to how dangerous he has always been. Yet around the Cabinet table, at Mar-a-Lago, and in the Republican caucus on Capitol Hill, it is gospel that his deranged threats forced a ceasefire and scored a major victory. The President\u2019s war, though, seems poised to achieve little that was not already available through prewar diplomacy, or through some renewed version of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or J.C.P.O.A., the Iran nuclear deal secured by the Obama Administration.<\/p>\n
In fact, the original sin of this disaster was Trump\u2019s abandonment of that deal, in 2018. For all its limits, it had stalled Iran\u2019s march toward an atomic weapon. But Netanyahu, long eager for a full-scale war against Iran\u2014aimed not only at its nuclear program but at its proxies, such as Hezbollah\u2014shrewdly played on Trump\u2019s vanity and his contempt for Barack Obama. Trump destroyed the J.C.P.O.A. with nothing to replace it.<\/p>\n
So the war stands as a strategic failure and a moral calamity. The ceasefire is already fragile. \u201cThe whole point of this exercise was supposedly to advance the cause of freedom in Iran,\u201d Karim Sadjadpour, a Washington-based specialist on the country, said. \u201cTo go from \u2018help is on the way\u2019 to \u2018we are going to wipe out your civilization\u2019 is strategic malpractice.\u201d According to Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert who formerly worked in Israeli intelligence, Trump\u2019s principal envoys to the region, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, almost certainly misread Iran\u2019s capabilities and intentions. \u201cThis is a colossal disaster and should never have happened,\u201d Citrinowicz said, noting that it will \u201chaunt the region and world for many years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the opening days of the war, the United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and wiped out much of Iran\u2019s defense and intelligence leadership, apparently believing that the regime would somehow give way to \u201cmoderates\u201d and \u201cpragmatists.\u201d Instead, the theocracy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remain in place, equally radical, equally repressive, and more determined than ever to acquire the ultimate deterrent: a nuclear weapon. Why give up that pursuit, as Libya did, and leave yourself exposed, when you can, like North Korea, achieve it and deter attack?<\/p>\n
Trump has gone far toward shattering what\u2019s left of America\u2019s global stature. His preposterous bluster about Greenland, Cuba, and NATO has undermined the postwar alliance. He has humiliated and betrayed the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky. And all the while Vladimir Putin, who aims to press Ukraine for still more territory, and Xi Jinping, who keeps Taiwan in view, watch the spectacle of Donald Trump for what it reveals about both his instability and the cratering credibility of American leadership.<\/p>\n
In the midst of the war, Trump released plans for his Presidential library. Its centerpiece will be an auditorium with an immense gold statue of himself. Whether it will turn with the sun is not yet known.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But when the Iranian regime failed to collapse or capitulate, when Netanyahu\u2019s prediction of a national uprising failed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2618,34,503,2620,2619],"class_list":{"0":"post-60751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-comment","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-magazine","11":"tag-splitscreenimagerightfullbleed","12":"tag-the-lede"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116379994286375958","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}